Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor
known for pushing takeovers and management shakeups, pledged
$200 million to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the biggest
donation ever given to the New York City teaching hospital.

The hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side will be renamed
the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, according to Jeanne
Bernard, a Mount Sinai spokeswoman. Most of the money will be
used to build research capabilities, she said in a telephone
interview today.

Icahn joins benefactors such as Sanford I. Weill, the
former Citigroup Inc. chairman whose name now adorns Cornell
University’s medical school in New York, and Kenneth G. Langone,
a Home Depot Inc. co-founder who has given to New York
University’s medical center. Icahn has already given $50 million
to Mount Sinai and has committed to an additional $150 million
over his lifetime, Bernard said.

“I am certain that my contributions to Mount Sinai will
lead to significant medical breakthroughs in the diagnosis and
treatment of disease that will dramatically improve and extend
human life,” Icahn, a trustee at the school, said in a
statement from Mount Sinai today.

The school will also rename a research center as the Icahn
Genomics Institute. The investor previously funded a research
building on the hospital campus and has donated to its $1
billion capital campaign. The latest gift is among the largest
ever given to a medical school, according to today’s statement.

Mount Sinai has more than 3,400 faculty in 32 departments
and 14 research institutes, according to its website.